Ron Ragland:
CLASS OF 1967
South Oak Cliff High SchoolClass of 1967
Dallas, TX
Ron's Story
Ron is from Dallas, Texas. He is ... well, it's complicated. His schools include South Oak Cliff High School. He later attended El Centro College, then went one year to East Texas State University, then went to North Texas University where he got a degree in Pre-Law. Political Science, and completed all of the course work toward a Masters in Public Administration specializing in City Management.. He works(ed) at retired.
Ron's interests include Sail Boating, Reading Books, mountain hiking, Water Skiing, Snow skiing. Music he likes includes Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, BB King. Books he likes include The 5 Th Discipline, Dialogue. Movies he likes include The Gladiator.
More about Ron: "Bachlor of Arts Degree in Pre-Law and Political Science and completed all course work towards a Masters of Public Adm. degree focused on City Management, from NTU. I had a 35 year career in City Management and worked in several cities: Garland, Addison, Coppell, College Station. Flower Mound, North Richland Hills, and Carrollton.
I have two grown sones. Zach 28, Jeremy 26. Zach saved enoungh money to move himself to California and start his own home based business. He grows hyperponic "Medicinal MJ" and sells his product directly to pharmacies. In the MJ culutural his products have been featured in magazines touting the strongest strains of MJ, and his products have won first place in International Competitions. Jeremy, is working as a full time waiter and is still living at home with his Mother..
I graduated from South Oak Cliff High School in '67 and all of us old Oak Cliff high school friends have our own Facebook page called: "Oak Cliff Boomers". We still hold events and keep up with each other on Facebook. Many of good memories are still shared on Facebook. Oak Cliff was one of the most beautiful parts of Dallas until the North Dallas Real Estate took action to target Oak Cliff be getting loans for blacks to move into the middle of our all white neighorhood. They were called "Block Busters", and no that term had nothing to do with renting videos.
This started what is called the "White Flight Movement" where all of the whites that could afford to sell their homes at less than maket value to Block Busters, and the more that happend the quicker the movement took off where all of the whites moved to the new suburbs and built new white communities with new schools for their children. Now if you go back to the black Oak Cliff you see a massive deterioration of the homes and neighberhoods. You see houses that have not been painted in years, bars on all the windows and doors because the blacks actually case each others homes during a visit them come back and steal anything of value from their very own neighbors and friends.
There are drive by shootings murdering innocent children who are just playing in the streets. There are many cars that are put up on blocks in the front yards and many abandoned cars that are not drivable parted in the driveways and yards created an unsightly nuances in every neighborhood. There are thugs and gangs and they make their presense know so that it is not safe to drive throungh the old neighborhood any more. Dallas has been taken over by the Hispanics and Blacks since white flight took place in the late 60's and early seventies. They have created what is now know as neighborhood blight, called deteriorating blight in the inner city and abandoned white neighborhood causeing the values of proporties to reach an all time low market value. Several of the Elected Officials in Dallas are corrupt but the blacks keep re-electing them because they reward their voters with projects in their own districts and see to it that they get their own relatives and friends get hired in most government jobs. They are fighting each other and trying to get whatever they can to help their own districts, rather than the past white Business Leaders who used to hold office and worked together to take care of the entire City as a whole. Everything changed when Dallas voted in "Single Member Districts where each elected Council person only represents their own single member district. Now the streets of Dallas are not being maintained but are being left to deteriorate to the point of crises maintenace. It cost $4 X the expense to do crises maitenance than it costs to do "Preventative Maintenance" for $1, but they don't make their decisions based on cost/benfits analysis any more, and the professional staffs that use to work for Dallas got tired of their professional recommendations being ignored by the black majority that they have all left the city and moved on to city's where they are still respected. The City Management System that Dallas Charter is governed by is being ignored and the Blacks are running the City like a Strong Mayor form of governent dispite what they are doing violates City Laws. They do not repect or abide by the City Laws. Dallas Charther has set up the City to be Run by a City Manager/Council Form of Governnent. The City manager has been relegated to just being a lowly staff member where his/her professional advice and recommnedation are not evey brought to the Mayor & City Councils agenda for consideration. The now white suburbs are now being considered by the national quality of life magazines to be the best places to raise and family with excellent schools and safe places to raise your children.
Having been born and raised in Dallas, and having completed a professional 35 year career as a CEO as City Manger in several Texas Cities, this opinion of mine is based on first hand knowledge of...Expand for more
facts and details, and personal observations. I still have to drive the streets of Dallas and I am concerned about all of the pot holes and the cost I will incurr due to the damage to my vehicle and tires. I am ashamed of what Dallas has become. I now live in a suburb of Dallas called Coppell. I was the City Manager of Coppell and I was hired before the real estate boom hit the town to upgrade the Master Land Use Plan to state-of-the-art standards. I wrote the first City wide Master Streetscape Plan for Coppell so all of the beautiflly landscaped streets and the use of decorative brick pavers are the results of that piece of legislation. I also put in place in every city that I managed a new form of "Anti-Neglect" legislation that requires all buildings in residential and commercial districts
to be manintained to the same buidling code that they were premitted under when they were built. This avoids deterioration and blight and the lowering of real estate market values. Real Estate values in Coppell have continued to "increase every year" at higher rates than our neighgoring cities even during the real estate makets bad times. Am I a racist? No and you can ask anyone who knows me black, white, Hispanic, and any other ethnic background. I was born white in poverty. My Grand Parents were Cotton Farmers right along side of many black families They bearly survived having 12 children to raise and they survived WWII and the Great Depression. They were born into this world with nothing and they left this world with nothing left behind. My father dropped our of school at the 8th grade and joined the Army to serve his country during WWII. I was born in poverty and grew up poor. But I live in Dallas I could see at an early age that a lot of people were driving brand new cars and were rich. I decided at the age of five (and I still remeber the day and where I was standing) when I made a life time decision that I would not marry or bring any children into this world if they were going to have to grow up in poverty like I did. I had a dream and a vision of moving up into the white collar world rather that the blue collar world that all of my ancestors had been stuck in for years. All of my relatives had one goal in raising their children, and it was not to even finish high school. Their goal was to help their children gain enough blue collar skills to be able to become independent by the age of 16. If they finished high school that was just a bonus not a goal. No one in my entire family knew anything about colleges and universities, and there were never any expectations or conversations regarding any one ever going to college. I did not know anything about colleges but when I did graduate from high school I found out that many of my friends parents were paying for them to go off to college. I know at that point that if I were ever to get past the blue collar world I needed to get an advanced college degree. My Dad has already fulfilled his obligation to me. He had trained me how to be a residental independant blue collar house painter by the age of 16. I had already contracted to paint my first two houses just before the first semester of college began. Only two weeks before the deadline to enroll I went to a University and actually got a grant (govenment loan) to get me through my first year of college. I really could not afford those governemnt loans so I did every thing I needed to do to work a ful time job and carry a full load of courses to get me through college. It took me 7 years but I completed a Bachlars Degree in Pre-Law & Political Science and completed all of the course work toward a Masters of Public Administration degree focused on the profession of City Management. Fortunately I was born a natural leader. During Graduate School I was nominate and was voted in to serve as the Vice President of the North Texas University Public Administation Alumni Association during my first year, and was again elected to serve as President duing my second year. I also won a competitive Honorary Internship Scholarship that would pay for me to work in any City Mangers Office in the city of my choice for nine months. I applied to work my Internship in one of the largest suburbs of Dallas
and one of the most progressive leaders in city government that were implementing state-of-the-art technology in all of their department. This was the City of Garland which had a night time population of 130,000 people.
Computers were still built on large main frames, but we already had city wide email, budeting, accounting, and entire traffic system that monitored the traffic flows on every street and programmed all of the street lights to turn green letting large masses of cars to drive from one end of town to the other end without having to stop. We were also recognized on an International bases as being the very first City it implement what at the time was the state-of-the-art private companies "Zero Based Multi-Year Budgetting".
The City of Garland not only allowed me to get my first expeince in working in the City Managers Office, but after the 9 month Intership they hired me as a full time employee. Over night I went from a grocery store clerk working for minimum wage to the top of the local government office working for thousands a month.
I was the dreams and the vision I conceived at the age of five years old that led me to take all of the necessary steps along my path to be the very first person in my enrtire family tree to complete a college degree and break the bond that held our family in the lower to blue collar class.
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